Editor:
Re: Outlaw leaf blowers on residential property, letter to the editor, June 20
Letter writer A. Cameron might know about some of the organizations that are forming in spontaneous efforts to get insulated and sealed city halls and legislatures to do what is logical about noise.
The New Yorker ran “Volumetrics” in its May 12 issue. In it, “Les Blomberg” executive director of the “Noise Pollution Clearinghouse” Montpelier, Vermont, stated: “What we're doing to our soundscape is littering it. It's aural litter — acoustic litter — and, if you could see what you hear, it would look like piles and piles of McDonald's wrappers, just thrown out the window as we go driving down the road.”
In Paris, the New Yorker continues, there's Bruitparif, which helped create the Harmonica Index. “Harmonica's most appealing feature is that it makes no reference to decibels, which even acousticians have trouble explaining because ... decibels are logarithmic. A 100-decibel sound isn't twice as intense as a 50-decibel sound: it's 100,000 times as intense.”
A few years ago, this same magazine ran an item about Cameron's personal bane: leaf blowers. There are quieter leaf blowers — after all we landed on the moon over 50 years ago -- but those who relish in noisy gadgets don't get the same rush from them because they assume that quieter means less powerful.
I wish Cameron luck with his vroom-vroom neighbour. I bet it's a boy.
Greg J. Edwards
